Another "should I Rift" thread...

I apologize in advance, it's obvious you have too many of these around lately. I've read them all. I tried a bit of "Rift lite". I'm still unsure and have questions. Sorry about the long read, thank you to those who bother to read it and respond.

WoW just doesn't do it for me anymore. I do not want to bash it, a lot of the blame lies on me and that's what I want to focus on, as to avoid this turning into a wow vs rift thread. I had all classes on 85 during Cata. I have 6 90's now. I raided as tank. I raid as dps for a while now. I don't enjoy healing.
This game has nothing to offer me anymore in terms of discovering new and fun stuff you can do with class builds which is one of the things I enjoy most during my play. Monks didn't do it for me. Not so much for the class, but I cannot in right mind go through leveling again.
I've done the bloody Barrens. I've done it a million times on 3 different accounts. The old world, the new world. I've probably done every damn quest in the game, across all my characters and more than once.
I've done all of the dungeons. Back when they were hard(er), with a non optimal group taking 2 hours to get together. As tank, as dps, as healer. I've done them mid-point when they were trivialized but still kinda fun. And finally I've done the aoe zerg fests they are today, more times than I cared for. And then some more.
I raid. I clear normals before nerfs, heroics after, if I have to. I rather just clear normal on an alt. Or 9. See the fights from a different perspective.

GW2 is amazing, but no raids seems to be a deal breaker for me.
Yet I didn't raid in SW:ToR at all, I spent the days in warzones playing horribly unbalanced pvp and I had fun for a while because... well, dual lightsabers to the face, basicly. But obviously, that too got old after a while.

The bottom line - I bloody well devoured WoW over the years, yet didn't "grew up and moved on" and I'm still hungry. I'm not looking for a complete switch, just something that can at least fill me up now that WoW doesn't offer much beside working on a new raid. So tell me this about Rift:

1. Immersion. Do the quests come with remotely interesting lore? I love to read them the first time around, at least. Lore is kinda important to me, I need to know why we do what we do, why we raid what we raid. It sets the mood. I don't terribly mind the quests being your standard "kill x, fetch y" fare, altough GW2 did spoil me a lot with it's system. Do the quests, dungeons and what not pull you into the world and set a distinct mood that clearly separate this game from all the similar games out there?

2. Classes and souls, how different are they from each other if every class can basicly do almost any role? Is there enough to separate the flavour of a dot-like mage dps from a dot-like cleric dps?
I abhor class homogenization that occured in wow. I don't want for more of the same.

3. Class balancing in both pve and pvp. Rangedcraft much? You know what I'm talking about. Be brutally honest, even if you love Rift as a whole.

4. European Raids and specs. Can you start a toon today and say "this is what I want to do" and have that survive the requirements of raiding guilds tommorow? I play on a full server in WoW. Melee dps is not in high demand at all, but if I want to, I can play it and I can find a guild that will be happy to have me. Can you do the same in Rift?
Is the biggest server populated enough to accomodate new players who don't want to play support/healer, or at least not on most fights?

5. European Pvp and specs. Similar to above.

6. Hardware. Older machine, i5 with 8gb RAM and Radeon 5700. Will it look nice enough and not stutter with 5+ people on the screen? Mostly concerned about this in a raid setting and pvp. A split second stutter in pvp can mean a world of difference.

1. The quests are the lore. Every single zone has a story that ends in some sort of a "finale" and contributes to some character / dungeon or raid boss or history of the land of Telara.

2. Each soul is a different play-style. ie A cleric has 9 "default" play-styles (combinations of souls and mixing of talent points excluded). For example, Warden soul = druid HoT healer, Sentinel = Paladin type brute force healer, Purifier = Discipline Priest, Justicar = Paladin type tank. So, technically, there are 36 play-styles in the game by default - this is BEFORE you start customizing with hybrid builds. It can get quite "hairy" all the combinations. For example, you can mix a tactition (rogue) with a bard for healing or a marksman, perhaps for Flame-Thrower type DPS. Heck, even the druid / defiler / justicar role I use has DoTs mixed with melee, a pet and self-heals:

3. PvE is fine for class balance (in my opinion). PvP - the game is not focused around PvP at all. However, I have heard that PvP is in a "good" place right now. Depends who you ask.

4. Rift is different to WoW - You will find yourself choosing to spec between range/melee to do the fight. It's so easy to do with SIX different builds/roles that you can swap between at any time. Raiding and fights are of an exceptionally high and competitive standard. EU has seen an explosion in returning players.

5. I can't comment as PvP is just "something I do" from time to time and have little to no interest in it, but I believe PvP shards in the EU are quieter.

Rift is basically built around raiding and everything else is window dressing. PVE raiding is the major focus.

2. Classes and souls can be different and yet alike in some ways. The classes themselves play somewhat differently due to certain archetypes having a strong inclination toward one goal or another. Or simply differences in class resources.

For example, clerics just have more options to heal than a warrior or rogue. Where a mage has a different set of resources and circumstances that govern his DOTs than that of the other 3 classes.

Within each class the souls can be very similar, however. As another example- all the warrior tanking options are fairly similar. Stealth souls for rogues are pretty close to one another as are rogue ranged options.

That is not to say souls are necessarily carbon copies of each other. They do have differences. Simply it is a much less dramatic difference between a Void Knight and Reaver warrior tank soul and Harbinger and Chlormancer mage souls.

I think in terms of lore Storm Legion has improved things. At least for me I feel much more interested in the story then I did in original rift. I donlt think the story in original rift is terrible though I think if its your first time it is worth reading the story quests. The kill 10 of this quests though I would just see what they want you to kill then click accept lol.

Rift is basically built around raiding and everything else is window dressing. PVE raiding is the major focus.

I'd like to add a viewpoint from a person who doesn't raid. I see people around the web say that Rift is a raid game first and foremost. Honestly, it rather annoys me because the game offers so much more. Trion has done a great job of giving folks who don't raid a lot to do and work for.

I've been playing Rift since beta 2. I take some breaks, I come back. I have fun every single time. In other games, I've hit a wall without raiding. In Rift, they always seem to give you some way to move your character forward without raiding. It won't be easy, it'll take a long while, but it's possible.

To the OP, if you enjoy working out new builds for a character, Rift is the place to do it. All builds won't work in cutting edge raids, but you can create and run an insane amount of builds before you hit that point.

I'd like to add a viewpoint from a person who doesn't raid. I see people around the web say that Rift is a raid game first and foremost. Honestly, it rather annoys me because the game offers so much more. Trion has done a great job of giving folks who don't raid a lot to do and work for.

I've been playing Rift since beta 2. I take some breaks, I come back. I have fun every single time. In other games, I've hit a wall without raiding. In Rift, they always seem to give you some way to move your character forward without raiding. It won't be easy, it'll take a long while, but it's possible.

To the OP, if you enjoy working out new builds for a character, Rift is the place to do it. All builds won't work in cutting edge raids, but you can create and run an insane amount of builds before you hit that point.

I agree with this heck I donlt even really do dungeons in rift and I still find more then enough to do.

Rift is basically built around raiding and everything else is window dressing. PVE raiding is the major focus.

Like the previous couple of posters have said, there are tons of things to do outside of raiding. It and WoW really lead the mainstream genre in 'other' activities. You can do several different PvE things to gain currency for gear, like dailies, special rifts, instant adventures, dungeons, etc. There is a robust achievement system and also artifacts to hunt for.

Additionally, the lore is a lot more tailored and fitting than every game I've played other than WoW. It's not as central a point perhaps, since it's not trying to tie in books to sell and previous games, but I wouldn't consider that a flaw.

While it is going to run pretty ragged on a lower end computer, with a mid to high end computer you will see that the world is beautiful and certainly not 'pretty bad'.

Just thought I'd give another opinion to balance with others. My vote is to go for it. At least try to get the Raptr deal with Rift Lite so you can level to 50 for free.

I wish i didnt bother. Its fun for a while, then i realized its just like an unpolished wow. IMO ofc.

Well at least unlike wow they don't really make it expensive to try. Unlike like this poster - I think rift is a more polished and better wow. Wow is the thing I wish I had never bothered to try. There is a lot to do in Rift and it isn't just running dailies or LFR. But I'll say this one thing, for whatever reason my opinion is not the popular one for rift. I don't believe more people don't play this game, but they are mostly brainwashed wow-addicts that can't stop even if a better product exists.

@ Fencers... Rift is built around raiding? Just makes everything else you say harder to read or care about after a statement as wrong as that.

Your gameplay goals are centered around raiding, however, there are plenty of other options and ways to play.

Exactly.

I don't have immediate plans to even look at raids, but see plenty of other things designed to occupy my time. Considering that these activities allow me to get gear, and can also be transferred to my alts, I would say it was designed to be an alternate play style. One that is sorely lacking in other games.

So what. The ability to pick flowers in lieu of raiding doesn't mean the game is focused around picking flowers.

The gameplay goals of Rift are centered primarily around raiding.

It's funny how people have been playing the game since release with little interest in raiding then. I guess they have done a pretty good job with the content that you believe is centered around raiding I agree that raiding is the main selling point in Rift, but there's a lot of fun stuff to do for the people who don't care about it!

Being able to do something else instead of raiding doesn't change the focus of the PVE gameplay.

It's totally irrelevant that Sally Standsinfire is having a ball doing onslaughts and collecting artifacts.

It's totally irrelevant what Fencers Friendlyface thinks about the focus of the game. Especially considering that extensive development has created different features outside of raiding. Just because you think the game is built around raiding doesn't make it so. If this game was solely built on a foundation of raiding, I wouldn't be playing it.

Just because the raiding is superior quality and extensive doesn't make it the focus. You could say the exact same thing about WoW and it would be just as wrong.